It is known that the performance characteristic of a non-stick coating which has resulted in its commercial success is its ability not to cause the food to stick during cooking. This gives rise to appreciable benefits in food cooking quality, nutritional and operating safety, lightening the task of supervision, ease of maintenance and other advantages associated with these.
One criterion which is particularly used to evaluate the quality of non-stick coatings is their resistance to scraping, or scratching, caused for example by cooking utensils, in particular when hot while food is being cooked.
Obviously containers for cooking food, for example saucepans provided with non-stick coatings of poor quality, that is ones poorly resistant to scratching, and other containers provided with high quality non-stick coating, one highly resistant to scratching, are available commercially.
A first disadvantage of quality non-stick coatings is their high cost.
Another disadvantage of quality non-stick coatings lies in the fact that they cannot readily be identified by ordinary users. In fact apart from purchase price and printed advertising from manufacturers of these saucepans, there are no objective criteria which make it possible for those purchasing a non-stick saucepan to ensure that they are acquiring a saucepan provided with a quality non-stick coating. High cost does not always guarantee that a saucepan is provided with a high quality coating.